


a_fault_in_my_code.exe

by shae (5H4E)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, broken boys building best friends for themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:38:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5H4E/pseuds/shae
Summary: K2SO is one-of-a-kind, the product of glitches and broken coding. Even if he was re-uploaded onto a different server, that droid would not be this K2SO; this sentient creature. This is, as the organics say, it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set sometime after ANH.

It is strategically inadvisable to pin this all down on the concept of love.

But then again, it would be tactically sound to relocate K2’s assignment to the Alderaanian princess, Leia Organa, and her assembly of operatives. To remain with the remnants of Rogue One would be disadvantageous, yet – despite the odds – K2 stays with Cassian.

There are no statistics on the reliability of love, no calculations for optimum efficiency. K2SO can translate binary code, analyse statistics, and was designed to craft battle strategies, but in this regard he is obsolete. His digital functions are preoccupied with mapping out the angles of Cassian’s face, recording the varying decibels of his voice, and storing them away in K2’s databank so he might have better chances at calculating the probability of getting Cassian to smile.

(K2 remembers the moment he felt the layer of submissive coding be deleted from his programming. He thinks he understands the concept of ‘insanity’ as there can be no other definition of his Imperial days, contained behind constraining programming and made to feel inferior. He remembers Cassian’s hands over his wiring and the first thing he said to K2, like a little boy trying to build himself a friend, was “my name is Cassian,”

 _Mine_ , K2 thinks, giddily. _This one is mine_.)

K2SO is one-of-a-kind, the product of glitches and broken coding. Even if he was re-uploaded onto a different server, that droid would not be this K2SO; this sentient creature. Cassian has back-ups regularly saved, but they both know that personhood isn’t something one can store on a hard drive or satellite. One’s identity is not meant to be contained. This is, as the organics say, _it_. It is not a normal or predictable thing, for a droid to comprehend their own mortality.

In Cassian’s private quarters one evening, Cassian asks him, “are you lonely, K? With nobody else in the galaxy like you?”

“No. I have no use for loneliness,” the droid drones, sat rigid in the cockpit.

Cassian leans against the exterior of K’s chest, the cool of the metal against his cheek. K2SO sits, quiet save for the soft whirring of his internal mechanisms, as his organic companion curls into the crescent of his hips, in the space under his arm, yawning audibly. “After all,” the droid continues, as Cassian’s eyes flutter closed slowly, “evidence suggests there is one other life-form in this galaxy like me.”

“Oh,” says Cassian, sleepily, “shut up.”

**Author's Note:**

> My heart breaks a little bit when I think about how K2SO and Cassian were, for a long time, all each other had. My heart breaks a big bit when I think about Cassian - who is still so young - pouring all his bottled up hope and love and affection into this droid that he reprogrammed by himself, for himself, to such a degree that his droid impossibly learns to love him back.
> 
> You can decide for yourself what this definition of love is.


End file.
